Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [142]
Buonarotti was the final deadly duplicate that Father Gabriel had made, as far as we knew from what we had witnessed upon destroying the demented sorcerer’s altar. But I agreed that we’d rest easier if we made absolutely sure.
Nelli, with her injured paw wrapped in a fresh bandage and healing nicely, observed everyone leaving the church as the service ended, just as she had observed them entering.
The priest’s funeral was heavily attended by members of all three of the crime families with which Father Gabriel’s life and evil works had been connected. Many non-felonious parish members were also in attendance. In particular, there were lots of tearful women mourners.
Lucky said, “So your boyfriend figured out—”
“Can you just call him Lopez?” I asked.
“So Lopez figured out that the Gambellos and Corvinos wasn’t hitting each other, huh? Not bad for a cop.”
“I told you not to underestimate him,” I said.
According to the newspapers—which was how I was learning about this, since Lopez hadn’t called me—the Organized Crime Control Bureau had initially believed Charlie’s death might be the commencement of a new Corvino-Gambello war. But after Johnny Be Good was hit, an unnamed “new recruit” to the bureau had pointed out that the Corvinos had nothing to gain by killing a useless momzer like Johnny and that the murder of Don Victor’s own nephew would certainly incite a mob war at a time when the Corvinos and Gambellos each had far more to lose from such a conflict than either side could hope to gain from it. So the “bright young detective” had proposed the investigators consider who would actually benefit from such a war.
“Cui bono,” Lucky said.
“Huh?” I said.
“Whom does it benefit?” Max translated. “Who stands to gain?”
“Oh.”
“Betcha never thought I knew some Latin.” Following this principle, the OCCB had stepped up its electronic surveillance of the Buonarotti family, and continued this scrutiny even after Danny “the Doctor” Dapezzo’s murder seemed to confirm a more obvious theory of events. Before long, circumstantial evidence pointed to Michael Buonarotti (quoted in a press release two days ago as assuring the media that he was “no relation” to Michelangelo). These suspicions were confirmed when the don was recorded on the phone admitting to the murders. That same night, Buonarotti was arrested at St. Monica’s.
A leaked excerpt of a transcript of the incriminating phone call certainly seemed to suggest Buonarotti was out of his mind. He claimed godlike qualities, including invisibility, the ability to pass through locked doors and to shoot around corners, and inviolable immunity from counterattack. He declared his victims were helpless against him, and he insisted he couldn’t be caught.
“Giving names and details on the phone,” Lucky said. “He really was going off his rocker.”
“I guess it all went to his head,” I said. “The power that Gabriel’s sorcery made available to him, the sense of supernatural omnipotence that Buonarotti felt when he—”
“There is no such thing as ‘supernatural’ phenomena,” Max said, watching the mourners exit the church. “There is only—”
“Esther’s right,” Lucky interrupted. “The power went to his oversized head. He shoulda never got those hair plugs. They probably affected his brain.”
“He wears hair plugs? Really?” I shook my head. “I never would have guessed.”
So when I had told Lopez that night at the bookshop that the Corvinos and Gambellos didn’t want a war, I had confirmed his theory that someone else was engineering all this. And he presumably had the church watched the following night because Buonarotti had alluded, in his recorded phone call that day, to having a “little bit” of help from a priest. OCCB hadn’t expected violence at the church Buonarotti attended, but “an alert patrolman” had called for backup upon hearing shots fired there after midnight.
Rumors were running rampant, in the media and in the congregation of St. Monica’s, about Father Gabriel’s activities. Perhaps because he was Catholic, it was his death, rather than his possible involvement in three Mafia hits, that